Sometimes it has a flat tire. This period of my life has to be the pinnacle in terms of change and tolerance. Has to be and must be. While I’m getting through it, I’m not gonna come out of this with any energy left to endure another run like this.
Here’s the bullet points:
My husband’s company transferred their headquarters from Manhattan to Houston.
He knew enough not to ask me if I was game to join him. Ted Cruz as my Senator? Utt uh.
We sold our house. Made of ton of profit, but left a home we loved and great neighbors.
He moved to Houston with one of our dogs. I moved to Philadelphia with the other.
Neither of us knows anyone in our temporary (and they are temporary) locations.
He has the distraction of work and training an entirely new staff.
I have the distraction of living in a gut renovation of what may be our final resting place.
And the welcome wagon in the City of Brotherly Love? Hasn’t pulled up just yet. There’s plenty of signs it may never show. Walking the dog that’s with me is horrifying. She’s never experienced city life and this city is not kind to furry friends. Well to bald headed ones either. Like one day when she was laying down a beautiful number two and my right hand was pre-tucked in a baggie for clean up. A woman passes by and says I hope you intend to pick that up.
A). The baggie glove should have been a hint and Q) fuck off.
I lived forty years in New York. Ya think I’m gonna leave my dog’s log behind?
So far the only people I’ve held a conversation with are the doormen and a few of the nurses in the Emergency Room while I was withdrawing from Klonopin. Well now I have the contractor and whoever else he brings to chat with except for the day five of them hadn’t yet taken ESL, which didn’t stop me from unloading on them regardless. All I need is a nod at this point.
And then there was the dog grooming experience. They must have sensed my newness. While they fawned over their usual clientele of ladies who lunch and their poodles, me and my terrier got the cold shoulder. Freezing. All of my requests to the groomer went unheard. They told me she’d be ready in three hours. One hour after I left they called and said she was ready. That means one thing; they shaved her. And it was even a bad shave. Jagged parts, completely skinned parts, no evidence of attention to her ears and I know she’s sensitive about that so they must have just brushed them out. She looks like a blonde flying rat and it’s certainly not helping her self esteem nor her adaptation to this city.
And then the final blow. This was definitely my mistake. I wore a Yankees tee shirt on a warm day. The glaring was one thing. A homeless man threw a French Fry at me, and the unspoken yield to the right rule on a sidewalk was replaced by a knock the hell outta this asshole policy.
I have bruises, a hairless dog that shakes uncontrollably and a knot in my stomach … but that’s due to the Klonopin withdrawal more than the welcome wagon with a flat.